The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  The ship had many names, many designations, but to its long-term passengers and crew it was referred to as the ship. No other starship could be confused for it. Not in volume, nor in history.

  The ship was old by every measure. A vanished humanoid race had built it, probably before life arose on Earth, then abandoned it for no obvious reason. Experts claimed it had begun as a sunless world, one of the countless Jupiters that sprinkled the cosmos. The builders had used the world’s own hydrogen to fuel enormous engines, accelerating it over millions of years while stripping away its gaseous exterior. Today’s ship was the leftover core, much modified by its builders and humans. Its metal and rock interior was laced with passageways and sealed environments, fuel tanks and various ports. There was room enough for hundreds of billions of passengers, though there were only a fraction of that number now. And its hull was a special armor made from hyperfibers, kilometers thick and tough enough to withstand most high-velocity impacts.

  The ship had come from outside the galaxy, passing into human space long ago. It was claimed as salvage, explored by various means, then refurbished to the best of its new owners’ abilities. A corporation was formed; a promotion was born. The ancient engines were coaxed to life, changing the ship’s course. Then tickets were sold, both to humans and alien species. Novelty and adventure were the lures. One circuit around the Milky Way; a half-million-year voyage touring the star-rich spiral arms. It was a long span, even for immortal humans. But people like Quee Lee had enough money and patience. That’s why she purchased her apartment with a portion of her savings. This voyage wouldn’t remain novel for long, she knew. Three or four circuits at most, and then what? People would want something else new and glancingly dangerous. Wasn’t that the way it always was?

  Quee Lee had no natural lifespan. Her ancestors had improved themselves in a thousand ways, erasing the aging process. Fragile DNAs were replaced with better genetic machinery. Tailoring allowed a wide range of useful proteins and enzymes and powerful repair mechanisms. Immune systems were nearly perfect; diseases were extinct. Normal life couldn’t damage a person in any measurable way. And even a tragic accident wouldn’t need to be fatal; Quee Lee’s body and mind were able to withstand frightening amounts of abuse.

  But Remoras, despite those same gifts, did not live ordinary lives. They worked on the open hull, each of them encased in a lifesuit. The suits afforded extra protection and a standard environment, each one possessing a small fusion plant and redundant recycling systems. Hull life was dangerous in the best times. The ship’s shields and laser watchdogs couldn’t stop every bit of interstellar grit. And every large impact meant someone had to make repairs. The ship’s builders had used sophisticated robots, but they proved too tired after several billions of years on the job. It was better to promote—or demote—members of the human crew. The original scheme was to share the job, brief stints fairly dispersed. Even the captains were to don the lifesuits, stepping into the open when it was safest, patching craters with fresh-made hyperfibers….

  Fairness didn’t last. A kind of subculture arose, and the first Remoras took the hull as their province. Those early Remoras learned how to survive the huge radiation loads. They trained themselves and their offspring to control their damaged bodies. Tough genetics mutated, and they embraced their mutations. If an eye was struck blind, perhaps by some queer cancer, then a good Remora would evolve a new eye. Perhaps a hair was light-sensitive, and its owner, purely by force of will, would culture that hair and interface it with the surviving optic nerve, producing an eye more durable than the one it replaced. Or so Quee Lee had heard, in passing, from people who acted as if they knew about such things.

  Remoras, she had been told, were happy to look grotesque. In their culture, strange faces and novel organs were the measures of success. And since disaster could happen anytime, without warning, it was unusual for any Remora to live long. At least in her sense of long. Orleans could be a fourth- or fifth-generation Remora, for all she knew. A child barely fifty centuries old. For all she knew. Which was almost nothing, she realized, returning to her garden room and undressing, lying down with her eyes closed and the light baking her. Remoras were important, even essential people, yet she felt wholly ignorant. And ignorance was wrong, she knew. Not as wrong as owing one of them money, but still….

  This life of hers seemed so ordinary, set next to Orleans’s life. Comfortable and ordinary, and she almost felt ashamed.

  —

  Perri failed to come home that next day, and the next. Then it was ten days, Quee Lee having sent messages to his usual haunts and no reply. She had been careful not to explain why she wanted him. And this was nothing too unusual; Perri was probably wandering somewhere new and Quee Lee was skilled at waiting, her days accented with visits from friends and parties thrown for any small reason. It was her normal life, never anything but pleasant; yet she found herself thinking about Orleans, imagining him walking on the open hull with his seals breaking, his strange body starting to boil away…that poor man…!

  Taking the money to Orleans was an easy decision. Quee Lee had more than enough. It didn’t seem like a large sum until she had it converted into black-and-white chips. But wasn’t it better to have Perri owing her instead of owing a Remora? She was in a better place to recoup the debt; and besides, she doubted that her husband could raise that money now. Knowing him, he probably had a number of debts, to humans and aliens both; and for the nth time, she wondered how she’d ever let Perri charm her. What was she thinking, agreeing to this crazy union?

  Quee Lee was old even by immortal measures. She was so old she could barely remember her youth, her tough neurons unable to embrace her entire life. Maybe that’s why Perri had seemed like a blessing. He was ridiculously young and wore his youth well, gladly sharing his enthusiasms and energies. He was a good, untaxing lover; he could listen when it was important; and he had never tried milking Quee Lee of her money. Besides, he was a challenge. No doubt about it. Maybe her friends didn’t approve of him—a few close ones were openly critical—but to a woman of her vintage, in the middle of a five-thousand-century voyage, Perri was something fresh and new and remarkable. And Quee Lee’s old friends, quite suddenly, seemed a little fossilized by comparison.

  “I love to travel,” Perri had explained, his gently handsome face capable of endless smiles. “I was born on the ship, did you know? Just weeks after my parents came on board. They were riding only as far as a colony world, but I stayed behind. My choice.” He had laughed, eyes gazing into the false sky of her ceiling. “Do you know what I want to do? I want to see the entire ship, walk every hallway and cavern. I want to explore every body of water, meet every sort of alien—”

  “Really?”

  “—and even visit their quarters. Their homes.” Another laugh and that infectious smile. “I just came back from a low-gravity district, six thousand kilometers below. There’s a kind of spidery creature down there. You should see them, love! I can’t do them justice by telling you they’re graceful, and seeing holes isn’t much better.”

  She had been impressed. Who else did she know who could tolerate aliens, what with their strange odors and their impenetrable minds? Perri was remarkable, no doubt about it. Even her most critical friends admitted that much, and despite their grumbles, they’d want to hear the latest Perri adventure as told by his wife.

  “I’ll stay on board forever, if I can manage it.”

  She had laughed, asking, “Can you afford it?”

  “Badly,” he had admitted. “But I’m paid up through this circuit, at least. Minus day-by-day expenses, but that’s all right. Believe me, when you’ve got millions of wealthy souls in one place, there’s always a means of making a living.”

  “Legal means?”

  “Glancingly so.” He had a rogue’s humor, all right. Yet later, in a more sober mood, he had admitted, “I do have enemies, my love. I’m warning you. Like anyone, I’ve made my share of mistakes—my youthful indiscretion
s—but at least I’m honest about them.”

  Indiscretions, perhaps. Yet he had done nothing to earn her animosity.

  “We should marry,” Perri had proposed. “Why not? We like each other’s company, yet we seem to weather our time apart too. What do you think? Frankly, I don’t think you need a partner who shadows you day and night. Do you, Quee Lee?”

  She didn’t. True enough.

  “A small tidy marriage, complete with rules,” he had assured her. “I get a home base, and you have your privacy, plus my considerable entertainment value.” A big long laugh, then he had added, “I promise. You’ll be the first to hear my latest tales. And I’ll never be any kind of leech, darling. With you, I will be the perfect gentleman.”

  Quee Lee carried the credit chips in a secret pouch, traveling to the tube-car station and riding one of the vertical tubes toward the hull. She had looked up the name Orleans in the crew listings. The only Orleans lived at Port Beta, no mention of his being a Remora or not. The ports were vast facilities where taxi craft docked with the ship, bringing new passengers from nearby alien worlds. It was easier to accelerate and decelerate those kilometer-long needles. The ship’s own engines did nothing but make the occasional course correction, avoiding dust clouds while keeping them on their circular course.

  It had been forever since Quee Lee had visited a port. And today there wasn’t even a taxi to be seen, all of them off hunting for more paying customers. The non-Remora crew—the captains, mates, and so on—had little work at the moment, apparently hiding from her. She stood at the bottom of the port—a lofty cylinder capped with a kilometer-thick hatch of top-grade hyperfibers. The only other tourists were aliens, some kind of fishy species encased in bubbles of liquid water or ammonia. The bubbles rolled past her. It was like standing in a school of small tuna, their sharp chatter audible and Quee Lee unable to decipher any of it. Were they mocking her? She had no clue, and it made her all the more frustrated. They could be making terrible fun of her. She felt lost and more than a little homesick all at once.

  By contrast, the first Remora seemed normal. Walking without any grinding sounds, it covered ground at an amazing pace. Quee Lee had to run to catch it. To catch her. Something about the lifesuit was feminine, and a female voice responded to Quee Lee’s shouts.

  “What what what?” asked the Remora. “I’m busy!”

  Gasping, Quee Lee asked, “Do you know Orleans?”

  “Orleans?”

  “I need to find him. It’s quite important.” Then she wondered if something terrible had happened, her arriving too late—

  “I do know someone named Orleans, yes.” The face had comma-shaped eyes, huge and black and bulging, and the mouth blended into a slitlike nose. Her skin was silvery, odd bunched fibers running beneath the surface. Black hair showed along the top of the faceplate, except at second glance it wasn’t hair. It looked more like ropes soaked in oil, the strands wagging with a slow stately pace.

  The mouth smiled. The normal-sounding voice said, “Actually, Orleans is one of my closest friends!”

  True? Or was she making a joke?

  “I really have to find him,” Quee Lee confessed. “Can you help me?”

  “Can I help you?” The strange mouth smiled, gray pseudoteeth looking big as thumbnails, the gums as silver as her skin. “I’ll take you to him. Does that constitute help?” And Quee Lee found herself following, walking onto a lifting disk without railing, the Remora standing in the center and waving to the old woman. “Come closer. Orleans is up there.” A skyward gesture. “A good long way, and I don’t think you’d want to try it alone. Would you?”

  —

  “Relax,” Orleans advised.

  She thought she was relaxed, except then she found herself nodding, breathing deeply and feeling a tension as it evaporated. The ascent had taken ages, it seemed. Save for the rush of air moving past her ears, it had been soundless. The disk had no sides at all—a clear violation of safety regulations—and Quee Lee had grasped one of the Remora’s shiny arms, needing a handhold, surprised to feel rough spots in the hyperfiber. Minuscule impacts had left craters too tiny to see. Remoras, she had realized, were very much like the ship itself—enclosed biospheres taking abuse as they streaked through space.

  “Better?” asked Orleans.

  “Yes. Better.” A thirty-kilometer ride through the port, holding tight to a Remora. And now this. She and Orleans were inside some tiny room not five hundred meters from the vacuum. Did Orleans live here? She nearly asked, looking at the bare walls and stubby furniture, deciding it was too spare, too ascetic to be anyone’s home. Even his. Instead she asked him, “How are you?”

  “Tired. Fresh off my shift, and devastated.”

  The face had changed. The orange pigments were softer now, and both eyes were the same sickening hair-filled pits. How clear was his vision? How did he transplant cells from one eye to the other? There had to be mechanisms, reliable tricks…and she found herself feeling ignorant and glad of it….

  “What do you want, Quee Lee?”

  She swallowed. “Perri came home, and I brought what he owes you.”

  Orleans looked surprised, then the cool voice said, “Good. Wonderful!”

  She produced the chips, his shiny palm accepting them. The elbow gave a harsh growl, and she said, “I hope this helps.”

  “My mood already is improved,” he promised.

  What else? She wasn’t sure what to say now.

  Then Orleans told her, “I should thank you somehow. Can I give you something for your trouble? How about a tour?” One eye actually winked at her, hairs contracting into their pit and nothing left visible but a tiny red pore. “A tour,” he repeated. “A walk outside? We’ll find you a lifesuit. We keep them here in case a captain comes for an inspection.” A big deep laugh, then he added, “Once every thousand years, they do! Whether we need it or not!”

  What was he saying? She had heard him, and she hadn’t.

  A smile and another wink, and he said, “I’m serious. Would you like to go for a little stroll?”

  “I’ve never…I don’t know…!”

  “Safe as safe can be.” Whatever that meant. “Listen, this is the safest place for a jaunt. We’re behind the leading face, which means impacts are nearly impossible. But we’re not close to the engines and their radiations either.” Another laugh, and he added, “Oh, you’ll get a dose of radiation, but nothing important. You’re tough, Quee Lee. Does your fancy apartment have an autodoc?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then.”

  She wasn’t scared, at least in any direct way. What Quee Lee felt was excitement and fear born of excitement, nothing in her experience to compare with what was happening. She was a creature of habits, rigorous and ancient habits, and she had no way to know how she’d respond out there. No habit had prepared her for this moment.

  “Here,” said her gracious host. “Come in here.”

  No excuse occurred to her. They were in a deep closet full of lifesuits—this was some kind of locker room, apparently—and she let Orleans select one and dismantle it with his growling joints. “It opens and closes, unlike mine,” he explained. “It doesn’t have all the redundant systems either. Otherwise, it’s the same.”

  On went the legs, the torso and arms and helmet; she banged the helmet against the low ceiling, then struck the wall with her first step.

  “Follow me,” Orleans advised, “and keep it slow.”

  Wise words. They entered some sort of tunnel that zigzagged toward space, ancient stairs fashioned for a nearly human gait. Each bend had an invisible field that held back the ship’s thinning atmosphere. They began speaking by radio, voices close, and she noticed how she could feel through the suit, its pseudoneurons interfacing with her own. Here gravity was stronger than Earth-standard, yet despite her added bulk she moved with ease, limbs humming, her helmet striking the ceiling as she climbed. Thump, and thump. She couldn’t help herself.

  Or
leans laughed pleasantly, the sound close and intimate. “You’re doing fine, Quee Lee. Relax.”

  Hearing her name gave her a dilute courage.

  “Remember,” he said, “your servomotors are potent. Lifesuits make motions large. Don’t overcontrol, and don’t act cocky.”

  She wanted to succeed. More than anything in recent memory, she wanted everything as close to perfect as possible.

  “Concentrate,” he said.

  Then he told her, “That’s better, yes.”

  They came to a final turn, then a hatch, Orleans pausing and turning, his syrupy mouth making a preposterous smile. “Here we are. We’ll go outside for just a little while, okay?” A pause, then he added, “When you go home, tell your husband what you’ve done. Amaze him!”

  “I will,” she whispered.

  And he opened the hatch with an arm—the abrasive sounds audible across the radio, but distant—and a bright colored glow washed over them. “Beautiful,” the Remora observed. “Isn’t it beautiful, Quee Lee?”

  —

  Perri didn’t return home for several more weeks, and when he arrived—“I was rafting Cloud Canyon, love, and didn’t get your messages!”—Quee Lee realized that she wasn’t going to tell him about her adventure. Nor about the money. She’d wait for a better time, a weak moment, when Perri’s guard was down. “What’s so important, love? You sounded urgent.” She told him it was nothing, that she’d missed him and been worried. How was the rafting? Who went with him? Perri told her, “Tweewits. Big hulking baboons, in essence.” He smiled until she smiled too. He looked thin and tired; but that night, with minimal prompting, he found the energy to make love to her twice. And the second time was special enough that she was left wondering how she could so willingly live without sex for long periods. It could be the most amazing pleasure.

  Perri slept, dreaming of artificial rivers roaring through artificial canyons; and Quee Lee sat up in bed, in the dark, whispering for her apartment to show her the view above Port Beta. She had it projected into her ceiling, twenty meters overhead, the shimmering aurora changing colors as force fields wrestled with every kind of spaceborn hazard.